Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse and Eau Claire are the latest hospitals that will introduce technology to monitor critical care patients remotely.
Intensive care unit patients in six of Mayo’s locations will have an extra set of eyes on them. Those eyes will be based in Rochester, Minnesota. With the new Enhanced Critical Care program, two RNs will remotely monitor patients' vital signs through computers and videos 24/7.
Carrie Apuan is the director of patient care in Mayo’s La Crosse critical care unit. She says if a patient has pneumonia, their vital signs can trend downward slowly and may not be noticed immediately by staff in La Crosse. “So [the remote monitoring] can see that up there,“ she says. ”Their software can trigger them to notify us that there is something that’s changing, whether ever so slightly.”
At night, a critical care physician will be available remotely to work with on-site nurses. These doctors are generally on-call and off-site at night, but now, nurses will be able to work with them immediately.
Aurora Health Care was the first to introduce it in the state. Milwaukee’s Froedtert Hospital provides a Virtual ICU for Bellin Health Care Systems in Green Bay.
Bellin ICU Director Jason Perry says since implementing the program, it has significantly cut back on the number of days a patient remains in the ICU, meaning there’s less of a chance for pneumonia and bed sores. “Therapy doesn’t stop just because it’s night shift,“ Perry says.”For a lot of places, therapy goes on hold, they stay on a holding pattern [overnight], [whereas] our MD is there all the time and it’s easy to grab him.”
Perry says the Virtual ICU technology is expensive, however. He says Bellin is reevaluating how it uses the system since it’s been able to hire more doctors to work nights.
